Thanks to the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, movie studios around Hollywood have been doing their best to recreate that golden goose by creating a shared universe between their properties. Marvel has a hell of a head start but with the DC Expanded Universe starting to ramp up and with the Universal Monsters doing their best to share some screen time, it may only be a matter of time before the Marvel formula becomes a staple for Hollywood blockbusters. Over at FOX, the men behind the curtain are finally getting on board with this idea, and not a moment too soon. FOX happens to own many of Marvel’s most popular characters and, until now, each of those franchises has remained in their own sandbox. It appears that producer Simon Kinberg, who produces many Marvel properties for FOX, has a grand plan for Deadpool, Gambit, and X-Men to crossover. Feel free to cheer.

Marvel fans often lament the fact that the comic book publisher sold off the movie and television rights to some of their best characters back in the 90’s in order to survive its biggest financial slump to date. In doing so, the House of Ideas let FOX have the rights to the X-Men universe, which, as you may guess, is a huge stable. Hell, at this point, Marvel Studios isn’t even allowed to use the term “mutant” in their movies, which is rather telling when it comes to just how desperate Marvel must have been at the time they sold those rights. Throughout the years, FOX has produced some wonderful movies out of this universe, including X-Men, X2, and The Wolverine, to name just a few, and recently hit the “reset button” on the universe with 2014’s X-Men: Days of Future Past. While the reset was a bit of a cheat in some fans’ eyes, for others, it gave FOX the opportunity to right some of the wrongs that came out of a few of FOX’s less successful attempts at the franchise. Well, it appears that X-Men producer Simon Kinberg is among the latter group, as he now has a grand design with respect to how to bring the entire X-Men universe together, including the upcoming Deadpool and Gambit films. Speaking with MTV, he revealed the bare bones but was very hush-hush when it came to specifics.

The idea is that we’ve sort of reset the timeline after ’Days of Future Past’ in some ways, and if not erased, certainly allowed for change from ’X1,’ ’2,’ ’3,’ everything from ’Days of Future Past’ forward, 1973, everything we set now becomes canon. So the ’Gambit’ movie, the ’Deadpool’ movie, will exist in a world that acknowledges whatever happened in ’Days of Future Past’ and moving forward. Doesn’t mean they’ll always interact with those characters, obviously, it’s not like every movie has all the characters, but they all have to exist within the same rules. There will be interplay between different characters in different movies.

Thank you, Simon. Thank you.

While audiences were tortured teased with a less-than-adequate Deadpool in 2009’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine, absolutely no one wanted to see that mess infect another franchise by showing up unexpectedly. Since then, however, Ryan Reynolds, the man who thought he would be playing the Merc with a Mouth in Wolverine but wound up just playing Wade Wilson and “Weapon XI”, launched his own campaign for a proper Deadpool flick, which led to development of the upcoming stand alone Deadpool movie, and, man, audiences can’t wait to see it! Between the footage shown at San Diego Comic-Con and the officially released trailers, it is safe to say that Deadpool is set to please fans of the character and there is no doubt that audiences will be begging for more.

Kinberg went on to explain that he is basically the most important man at FOX right now, as his entire money printing design is only recorded in his own mind, though he does admit to having the basics on his computer. Which he likely locks with a 27 digit password, fingerprint AND retina scanning, plus possibly a needle for DNA analysis.

I don’t have it up on a wall, but I have it on my computer, and I have it sort of tattooed on my brain now too. Nothing external, so that if I get knocked over the head, no one can read it. It’s literally behind my eyelids. But yeah, we have a clear sense of the directions we want to take them in and in my mind at least, how we could start to cross-pollinate sort of with those characters that have their standalone movies.

If there is a higher power, let’s all hope that it keeps Kinberg safe long enough for his plans to come to fruition.

You may notice that the other huge Marvel universe that FOX owns, Fantastic Four, is completely absent from this list. After a disastrous last outing, the fate of Marvel’s First Family remains in the air. Kinberg recently voiced his support of a sequel but considering the money lost this year on Josh Trank’s project, this isn’t likely to happen. This is a bit of a disappointment, really. After all, while the story and character changes were horrible, this was by no means the worst comic book movie to hit screens, and the absolutely stellar cast could be considered the saving grace of the film. It would be interesting to see the same cast in a Fantastic Four film that was handled competently. Then again, considering this was FOX’s fourth attempt at making a FF film and the fourth that audiences felt was a failure, perhaps keeping those superheroes separate isn’t a bad idea after all.

In case you have somehow missed or forgotten just how awesome some of these films are, here are some trailers, so that you can let your imagination run wild. Fair warning: That Deadpool trailer is the red band. Enjoy.

How do you feel about these worlds colliding? How do you think FOX should handle Fantastic Four moving forward?

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